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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24774349">Jane's Shadow in the Sea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanillaHorizon/pseuds/VanillaHorizon'>VanillaHorizon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Jane and the Dragon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Creatures &amp; Monsters, Alternate Universe - Pirate, F/M, First Meetings, Gen, Legends, Mythical Beings &amp; Creatures, One Shot, Pirates, Random &amp; Short, Rare Pairings, Sea Monsters, Short, Short One Shot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:16:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24774349</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanillaHorizon/pseuds/VanillaHorizon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many tales of a very strange creature that lurks the very waters that Jane and her ship so sail. Some people call them legends and don't believe the stories, but everyone knows that even the wildest of story may have a small bit of truth behind it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jane Turnkey/Gunther Breech, janther</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Jane's Shadow in the Sea</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Technically kind of Janther, but kind of not at the same time.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sea bound and sea born, two types of being, so very different from one another, but yet so similar.</p><p>Some people are quite literally born to the sea, and others find it later in their life, these two types of people are all bound to eventually meet one another, be it at sea or on the land.</p><p>For many years, under the sea so swam a man with fins and a tail of glistening black scales, only comparing in beauty to the night sky itself, under which a specific human woman was bound to one day sail the very oceans he called home.</p><p>The young man was a sea creature known by a great many names, and the young woman, known only at first by one and a title that she did not want.</p><p>•••</p><p>A woman with mess of bright orange-red hair commanded a ship that was unlike any other.</p><p>In place of brown oak sat green and yellow wood, stronger than most metal, and instead of her ship being named after a woman as so many were, she called her great vessel 'The Dragon' for never once did he waver.</p><p>The Dragon himself would surely interfere should a pirate ever attempt to take the ship.</p><p>It was as if her ship lived and breathed with a life blood of it's own.</p><p>"Captain Turnkey, we've got another incoming ship, no idea if it's hostile or not," Jane's Quartermaster, Ivon, alerted her.</p><p>"Best to be prepared for anything then, yes?" She replied.</p><p>"You got it, I'll tell the crew."</p><p>Once he was out of earshot, she leaned down close to the ships wheel and patted it affectionately.</p><p>"They won't be a problem for us, will they?" She whispered.</p><p>Little did Jane know that the ship they were soon to meet had a rather interesting piece of cargo aboard.</p><p>•••</p><p>The pirates were not fisherman by any means, but due to the stories they had heard in the previous months of a creature in the very waters they so sailed, they started to gather nets full of fish in the hopes of finding the mystery creature.</p><p>Stories varied greatly with each telling of each persons tale.</p><p>Nothing would've led them to guess that the creature looked so much like one of them while also looking like nothing they had ever seen at the very same time.</p><p>It had taken them weeks of nonstop attempts to find and catch their true prey.</p><p>•••</p><p>The merchant sailor turned pirate named the black tailed creature Gunther and had already started writing the story of the capture long before Jane and her crew ever set their eyes on the former merchant's ship.</p><p>The pirate did not know that Jane and The Dragon lurked in the nearby waters.</p><p>Nor did Magnus know that they would be his true downfall, unraveling the hundred lies he had already woven.</p><p>•••</p><p>"You know Captain, there are many tales of a very strange creature that lurks these waters," her First Mate Theodore said as he walked up the steps toward Jane.</p><p>"What other kinds of creatures could possibly be lurking out here aside from the sharks and whales?"</p><p>"Nothing so large or violent I'm afraid, I was speaking of sea-born creatures, a type of mer folk if the stories are to be believed, some people believe them to be mere legends."</p><p>Jane nodded a silent reply.</p><p>"Tell me, do you believe the same?" She finally asked after a few moments.</p><p>"I believe that every legend has at least a fraction of truth behind it, but whether those stories are true or not, that is an entirely different question all together."</p><p>•••</p><p>Jane, Dragon and their loyal crew easily overtook what once was a royal merchant ship, taking the man in charge as a prisoner to take back to the king so he could face conviction for his crimes against the crown.</p><p>"Do you know who I am?" He shouted as Ivon tossed him into a cell.</p><p>Of course they knew who he used to be at least, he was Magnus Breech, once one of the king's most trusted sources for exotic materials, like fine silks and beautifully woven tapestries, until it came out that he was nothing more than a pirate thief with no honor who posed for far too long as a mere merchant.</p><p>Jane took to searching the Captain's quarters, that's where she found it.</p><p>In the exotic looking tub, lay what at first glance she thought to be a normal man.</p><p>She had to rub her eyes to make sure she wasn't seeing things.</p><p>It had a long tail half hanging over the side of the tub.</p><p>The creature appeared to be curled in on itself in a somewhat fetal position, or as close to one as the creature could get with the extremely long tail and fin it was sporting.</p><p>Her feet propelled her forward though her mind still waited absently at the door.</p><p>No coherent thoughts came as she walked closer to the tub.</p><p>She didn't know why she did it, but she reached a hand out to touch the creature as soon as she kneeled beside the tub.</p><p>"Captain?" She quickly withdrew her hand as soon as she heard Theodore's voice, causing the creature to flinch.</p><p>She raised her eyebrows at the seemingly unconscious reaction of the half fish man then looked over to her first mate questioningly.</p><p>He nodded, letting her know that he too saw the reaction.</p><p>"This must be what he was ranting and raving about, he called it 'his greatest find' and said he named it Gunther," he said as he cautiously stepped forward.</p><p>At the mention of the name, the creature looked up at the man, still holding a defensive posture that practically screamed uncomfortable.</p><p>"Hello there, I'm Jane, can we call you Gunther?" </p><p>At the new voice, he turned his head and met her green eyes.</p><p>She smiled gently at the creature, and he seemed to relax just a bit because of that.</p><p>Jane glanced back up to Theodore after a few moments with a look of unease.</p><p>"We can't just leave him here and I doubt we could move him easily, what do we do?" She asked.</p><p>Theodore hummed for a moment before noticing the large window above the bed.</p><p>"I take it you don't wish to kill nor keep it as a trophy?" He asked, to which she quickly shook her head.</p><p>"Absolutely not!"</p><p>"Then I suppose our best bet would be to keep his existence between us and release him back into the waters."</p><p>"But how?"</p><p>Theodore motioned toward the window.</p><p>"You are a genius!" She squealed, causing the silver-eyed merman to show an expression of surprise.</p><p>While the rest of her crew were busy taking inventory of the goods aboard the ship, she and Theodore took to knocking out the window above the bed.</p><p>"It'll likely be easier and less dangerous to him if we just move the bed out of the way and bring the tub over here," Theodore told her as she made sure a majority of the remaining glass was removed as to not injure the creature as they returned him to the sea.</p><p>Jane nodded in agreement, "Okay, but we should hurry, lest the rest of the crew find out about our fishy friend here."</p><p>It was easy enough for the two of them to move the bed, but the bath proved to be a bit more difficult to move without accidentally tipping it over.</p><p>"What if we pull it to the window instead of pushing it, maybe it'll be less likely to tip over that way."</p><p>Theodore nodded, "You might be onto something there."</p><p>Pulling the sheets off of the bed, they wrapped them around the tub in various places and soon enough started to pull the tub to the window.</p><p>"Okay, Gunther, we're going to have to pick you up, I hope that's okay," she told the merman, unsure of whether he could actually understand her or not.</p><p>He instinctively lifted himself up, trying to get a better view of the water out the window.</p><p>"You'll be back to swimming in no time," she assured him.</p><p>It surprisingly didn't take long for the two humans to manage to get the merman back to the sea after they got the tub close enough to the window.</p><p>They both stared out the window as the creature disappeared back into the depths of the sea.</p><p>"We are likely two of the only people who will ever be able to say we have returned a living myth to the sea, you know this, yes?" Theodore asked as he continued to stare out to sea.</p><p>"It was the right thing to do."</p><p>•••</p><p>From that day out, wherever the Dragon sailed the sea, the creature known only as Gunther traveled below, feeling indebted to the human with hair as orange as some of the fish that make their homes in sea anemone and eyes greener than kelp.</p><p>Whenever the Dragon so docked, there would soon be a rumor of the creature with fins as dark as night and as long as a courtyard that appeared at the dock overnight.</p><p>Some say this was sign of a curse put upon the Captain Jane and her great ship by a sea witch they had wronged during their travels.</p><p>Others think it just a ghost of the past which had clung to the crew.</p><p>Jane and Theodore only had vague ideas to what this mystery shadow in the sea truly was that followed them.</p><p>These stories grew and grew throughout the years and eventually one of the three things were never mentioned without the other two.</p><p>Jane, her loyal ship Dragon, and the Shadow in the sea which followed the two wherever they went.</p><p>Some say Jane and the Shadow became a story of lost love at sea, others believe it to be much more, and few believe it to be even less.</p><p>Only the Dragon's Captain and the Shadow truly know.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A merman/pirate/sailor AU that no one asked for? YUP.</p><p>Also, if you're reading this- You're pretty awesome. &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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